


This is Why I Have Trust Issues

by scribblemyname



Category: Captain America (Movies), Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Fusion, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-03
Updated: 2017-10-03
Packaged: 2019-01-07 20:44:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12240321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribblemyname/pseuds/scribblemyname
Summary: Captain America misses the world she's left behind, but some of the people she misses might not actually be dead.





	This is Why I Have Trust Issues

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chase_acow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chase_acow/gifts).



Morning in D.C. There weren’t many people out and about yet, almost no one on the run she’d chosen. It reminded Kathryn Janeway of the Academy where she’d trained, of the days before she was the newly minted Captain America.

The last time she’d run like this, or wanted to, _tried_ to, she remembered being small and wheezing, doing her laps to train for the new female division of the army, hoping against hope they’d take her. They didn’t. That last time she’d actually run anything like this, she’d been in the field with her new, stronger body.

The world was not the same anymore. It was bigger and stronger, like she’d been. Emptier of all the known and familiar. She missed Mark, missed her dog, missed Annika…

“On your left.”

The man she passed swore like a cadet at the Academy and ran like one too.

She ran faster, as if she could outrun memory. Mark and his dementia, seeing her but not _seeing_ her. Just thinking of it lit hot discomfort in her chest. And there he was again, a blur barely to one side of the path they were running down.

“On your left,” she called out again.

Pounding across the ground, thinking, remembering. Running faster than an ordinary human could, let alone the person she’d been before they’d given her the serum.

“Don’t you even say—“

“On your left.”

It felt good, like something Annika would have done with a laugh and no regrets. Kathryn couldn’t say she was regretting anything, but the world felt far too heavy.

When she finally came to a stop, she was glad to see he was actually grinning back at her. “Captain,” he greeted.

“Kathryn Janeway.” She reached out to shake, and he met her with a firm grip.

“Tom Paris.”

He was friendly enough, clearly flirtatious by nature, but she didn’t get the sense as they talked that he was flirting with her, so much as simply behaving the way that came naturally to him. It reminded her of Annika again, with another pang. Annika could pick up men with ease and bring along a double date to inflict Kathryn on as well.

“Sometimes I speak down at the VA. You could come down sometimes.” The invitation was issued with friendly sincerity and even less of the background flirting.

“I just might do that.”

And then a suspicious looking black car honked and pulled up beside them. Kathryn almost rolled her eyes, certain she knew who was rolling down the dark windows.

A warm teasing tone to match the twinkle in the other woman’s eye greeted her. “Anyone know where the Smithsonian is? I’m supposed to pick up a fossil.”

Kathryn just grinned back and shook her head. “B’Elanna.”

Tom stared, looking just short of awe-inspired. “Well, hello.” There was definitely an unspoken ‘gorgeous’ in there.

Kathryn took pity and gestured in his direction. “This is Tom Paris. I’ll see you later,” she told him before sliding into the car.

B’Elanna’s mild irritation—mild by B’Elanna standards anyway, not so much anyone else—was still etched on her face. “Who was that?”

“Oh, just another vet,” Kathryn answered as she buckled in and leaned back comfortably. “Apparently, he speaks at the VA sometimes. He invited me to come down.”

“You should go.” B’Elanna glanced over but only for a moment, then pulled out into traffic as if spending too much attention on it would make Kathryn decide to do the opposite.

“If you’ll come with me.”

The scoffing noise B’Elanna made was answer enough.

Kathryn changed the subject. “Do you know what Chakotay wants?”

“Oh, probably what he always does,” B’Elanna answered easily. “The impossible.” The bite in her voice was friendlier now that she was discussing someone she clearly admired and cared for.

Kathryn just smiled. “I often want the same thing.”

* * *

She believed that then. They wanted the same thing because Kathryn wanted the impossible…

Peace. Security for their country. That’s where it was most like Chakotay. Safety for her loved ones.

But there her heart gave a sharp pang because she couldn’t have Mark’s memories back, couldn’t have Annika following her home after her father’s funeral, offering a warm home together as if they were ever really apart. She couldn’t have her dog, her frailer body she didn’t really miss, coffee made from the same grounds she used to buy before the war and rationing, and this world had so much coffee, but none of it quite tasted like the black, dark brew she used to make for her father then drank herself. It was all impossible.

B’Elanna laughed and teased her with the good humor she had before doling out a good thrashing with near berserker rage— _“If you asked Harry Kim to have dinner with you, he’d probably say yes.” “That’s why I don’t ask, B’Elanna.” To say nothing of his achingly modern youth._ —then she was throwing herself out of the helicopter as if it wouldn’t even hurt when she hit the water, but the hit felt good, and the shield was a natural extension of her own body now.

She threw the shield, drew it back, threw her own body with still the taint of surprise at what it would do for her now, and cleared the upper deck with an efficiency she couldn’t help but relish.

“What about the Doctor?” B’Elanna suggested.

“Engine room, B’Elanna.”

“Sorry, Captain, but some of us think you need to get out more.”

“This is out. Below.”

“Missions don’t count.” And B’Elanna went over the edge of the railing. Not only was she an expert at hitting men until they were down, but there wasn’t much she couldn’t do with something mechanical in front of her. Kathryn knew it was in good hands.

* * *

Too good of hands maybe.

“Well, look who decided to crash the party.” The bite in B’Elanna’s tone was far less pleased than it had been earlier.

“What are you doing here?” Kathryn demanded. “Why aren’t you securing the hostages? That was our mission.”

“Actually,” B’Elanna correctly, almost absently, eyes focused on the computer she was busy hacking her way into if Kathryn was any judge, “that was your mission. Chakotay has me on this.”

“And what is this?” Kathryn looked for herself and realized abruptly B’Elanna was copying the hard drives.

This was a SHIELD ship, potentially compromised, and another bombshell dropped.

* * *

She went to Chakotay and demanded answers. He was surprisingly helpful with providing them. “It will lead to a safer world.”

“At what cost? This isn’t freedom,” she disagreed vehemently. “This is fear.”

She went back out, thinking maybe she’d take Tom up on his offer, pondering her position the whole way there. She’d thought SHIELD would be the place she could help to protect the world, make a difference, do the right thing, and now she wasn’t sure of that at all.

* * *

“Chakotay, what is it?”

He could always drag Seska out of a meeting, ask her for a favor or two, and this had started a niggling discomfort in his gut. Files he couldn’t access for his own program. A ship diverted and taken hostage that no one should have known existed.

“I have a bad feeling about this. I’d like some time to check it out.”

“We’ve been on this timetable for a long time.”

“I know,” he agreed. “But if this is what I think it is, we don’t want those helicarriers in the air.”

Seska studied him for a long moment. “Of course.” She smiled. “Just promise me a very nice weekend.”

That was something he could certainly do.

* * *

He called Tuvok on a hunch. He didn’t expect to hang up and suddenly have a full strike team and a missile hit his vehicle.

Kathryn, on the other hand, didn’t expect to come home to her apartment to find a bleeding, injured Chakotay secretly informing her that SHIELD was trying to assassinate him.

But when the bullet came through the window, she didn’t stand upon the order.

There weren’t many people who could keep up with Captain America now, but they existed, those who honed their bodies into living weapons and fought with creativity and confidence and consummate skill. For all her training and unnatural talents, Kathryn had certainly met those with more experience at surviving lethal combat and the additional skills that went with that.

This wasn’t that.

This was the assassin that had tried to kill Chakotay, that B’Elanna had warned her about— _“She’s a legend. She’s dangerous. A ghost story with more high-profile assassinations than anyone should be able to get away with.”_ —that Kathryn was following through walls, punching through doors and glass and couldn’t quite catch her. She flung her shield to stop the Winter Soldier from escaping over the edge of the roof, and the woman turned. Her arm came up and she _caught_ it. Her metal hand didn’t look even slightly damaged.

Kathryn stared.

Then the Winter Soldier flung it back.

Kathryn had no more time than to catch it and watch as the Winter Soldier escaped into the night.

* * *

Tuvok had apparently flown in or been called in. Kathryn was beginning to think she really didn’t know how many secrets Chakotay kept, and she didn’t trust Seska and her veiled questions about the unknown assailant. But Tuvok was someone Kathryn at least felt didn’t have the same sort of agenda.

He nodded in greeting, grim and serious as he surveyed Chakotay’s medical bed through the viewing window.

B’Elanna stared with much less reserve, open concern written on her face, a slight gasp.

Chakotay flatlined.

Kathryn stared, her own heart feeling like it seized up. What was really going on with the data from the Lemurian Star? Who was really moving these pieces around?

* * *

They followed the missing pieces to their source.

“Whoever programmed this was very good. Not as good as I am, but good enough to keep us from getting more out of this.”

But it was still a surprise when Kathryn realized what they were staring at.

“Captain?” B’Elanna stared at her with faint concern creasing her face.

“It’s nothing. Just...” Kathryn let her voice trail off. She remembered Mark here. Remembered the serum, the training, her Howling Commandos and Annika. “This is where everything happened.”

B’Elanna glanced around. “This is it, huh?” That wry smile. “Welcome home.”

It wasn’t really welcoming, but it was familiar, and it was _wrong._

“This wasn’t here. Not like this.” She shook off her personal nostalgia and slid back into Captain America to investigate exactly what was wrong.

The last thing she was expecting to discover was the Queen, even more of a legend than the Winter Soldier.

“Hydra.”

“The collective has waited a long time for this day, Captain.” Her cold fleshless image smiled on ancient computerized images. “You are too late to stop us.”

“Not if I have anything to say about it,” Kathryn growled, stepping forward to do something to wipe that smug smile off the Queen’s face.

“But you don’t,” said the Queen.

“Captain!” B’Elanna called out a warning. “We have incoming.”

She had to do something. She ripped out the floorboards instead of that infestation of a consciousness and covered B’Elanna with the shield before their world exploded in flames.

* * *

They needed a plan and a safehouse, and there was really only one place left to go.

Tom Paris looked surprised to see them when he opened the door, staring between them like he wasn’t sure whether Christmas had come early or he should be very, very worried.

“Everyone we know is trying to kill us,” B’Elanna stated with her usual bluntness.

“Can we lie low here for a little while?” Kathryn asked with somewhat more politeness.

He stared another moment, then drew the door open wide. “Be my guest. Make yourselves at home.”

* * *

“He’s nice.”

“Don’t turn that around on me,” B’Elanna warned.

Kathryn laughed and settled in the chair across the room. They’d showered, washed hair, gotten blood and grime off after the bunker.

B’Elanna sighed as she finished toweling off her hair. It curled around her face as she stared off in the distance for a moment. “So much for going straight.” She glanced at Kathryn, shook her head. “I was so angry and SHIELD gave me a cause I could believe in. I thought I was making things right at last.”

There was a lot in B’Elanna’s history she didn’t usually talk about. Kathryn knew enough to know she’d been recruited from hostile ranks.

But B’Elanna wasn’t finished. She looked up, eyes narrowed slightly as she tried to read Kathryn. “If our situation had been reversed, if I was the only one who could save you, would you trust me?”

Kathryn stared at her for a long moment, thought about what was really being offered here. “Yes,” she said quietly. “I would.”

They shared a small smile.

* * *

They ate while they planned, and Tom hovered conspicuously as he blatantly eavesdropped. “You’re probably going to need some help with that, right?”

“There’s not exactly a large pool of candidates we can trust,” B’Elanna pointed out.

Tom wasn’t put off by her ignoring his own obvious eagerness. He showed them the file on his project and Kathryn snapped her gaze up to his in disbelief.

“I thought you were a pilot,” she protested.

“I never said that,” Tom protested right back.

He knew exactly where to find his wings. Kathryn thought he had to be even more reckless than she’d originally assessed to want to fly those things.

“The security won’t be a problem,” B’Elanna told him.

* * *

They ambushed Sitwell, and Kathryn let B’Elanna push him off a building like she’d been wanting to because both of them knew that Tom was going to catch him. And really, those wings were magnificent.

All was actually going swimmingly—until a metal hand broke through the windshield and tore out the steering wheel of their car. Tom filled the air with colorful swearing while B’Elanna forced them down into a more defensible position.

For all the good that did them.

The previous attack on them had been a missile from a distance, and while the elevator had been up close and personal, this was even more desperate, more personal, this encore with a human machine, hidden in black garb and metal limb and what appeared to be some sort of implants built right into the woman’s face.

She crunched metal and concrete in her artificial fingers, threw off B’Elanna’s electrocuting bites, and kept shooting, kept coming, brought a knife to bear as Kathryn fought her with the shield and everything she had inside her.

Then the mask slipped off and there, despite the implants, the technology gleaming over her eye, was a face Kathryn _knew_ like she knew few others.

“Annika.” She could barely breathe as she stared into that almost inhuman gaze.

A quirked eyebrow, so achingly _familiar_ on that face, in question. “Who is Annika?”

The words punched her harder than that metal arm. “Annika. It’s me. Kathryn. _You know me.”_ She searched those eyes for any faint hint of recogniction.

All hint of personality vanished. “My designation is Seven of Nine. Annika is irrelevant.”

* * *

Annika is irrelevant. The words played over and over in her head as they drove, as Tom badgered their captors to care for the blood seeping through B’Elanna’s clothes from the bullet in her shoulder. _Annika is irrelevant._

Anger was beginning to crowd out the devastation.

Not if she had anything to say about it.

One of their captors suddenly slammed his gun into the others, knocked them both out with an efficient pinching maneuver on their necks.

It couldn’t be.

Tuvok removed his helmet. “I believe it’s best we exit the vehicle.”

B’Elanna and Tom stared in shock.

Kathryn stared with them, in some mix of surprise and pleasure. “I quite agree.”

* * *

Chakotay was alive and B’Elanna was going to kill him.

“I ought to punch you so hard your teeth fall out,” she brought out through gritted teeth.

“I’d rather you didn’t,” Chakotay replied, somewhat more calmly. He looked worse for wear and the laundry list of injuries the Doctor gave them sounded ominous.

“But don’t worry,” the Doctor added cheerfully. “He’ll do just fine under my care. I assure you, in time, he’ll be right as rain.”

Kathryn smiled warmly—“Thank you, Doctor”—then turned her attention more sternly back to Chakotay. “You let us all think you were dead.”

“I didn’t know who to trust. Seska and I were close,” he explained. “We’ve been together from the beginning. And she’s the one who ordered me killed.”

“You didn’t trust me,” B’Elanna added bitterly, arms crossed, glaring at him.

“You would have done the same thing.”

It’s not like she could deny that.

But even as he started to outline his plan for salvaging SHIELD, Kathryn was already counter-formulating her own.

“No, Chakotay,” she stated firmly, clearly surprising him. “This ends now. SHIELD can’t be salvaged. Hydra grew up inside of it the first time, and none of us knows who to trust.”

“It is logical,” Tuvok agreed. “The situation is dire and the compromise severe. I do not know it would be wise to attempt to save what is left.”

Chakotay looked surprised at them. “B’Elanna?”

“Sometimes it’s better to scrap the machine for parts,” she agreed.

A glance at Tom Paris.

“Hey, I’m just following the Captain.” He nodded her way. “I do what she says.”

“I see.” Chakotay looked thoughtful, returned his gaze to Kathryn. “I guess this is your show.”

* * *

It was a good plan and a good team. It wasn't her Howling Commandos, and yet it felt just the same, surrounded by a team she could rely on and, Chakotay's issues notwithstanding, _trust_. She appealed to the good remaining in SHIELD. She could do that much, warn them, call for them to help. Then she focused on her mission and nothing else.

Almost nothing else.

So close to the very end of everything, and there was Annika, suited up, barely recognizable beneath the gear and the metal, but never, never unknown.

"Don't make me do this."

Annika didn't wait for Kathryn to say more. She struck in earnest and metal clashed against metal, arm against shield, stone cold gaze against fiery passion. Kathryn didn't want to hurt Annika, but clearly the feeling was unrequited. They punched, they scrabbled, they fought, and twice Kathryn lost the chip only to retrieve it again, with another set of bruises, a rib that felt cracked.

She got the chip in. "Tuvok, now."

Tuvok wouldn't hesitate. Tuvok was logical, reliable. She closed her eyes.

The helicarriers blew, fired on each other with a vengeance they'd barely spared being unleashed on the entire unsuspecting world. But the world wasn't gone yet.

_Annika is irrelevant._

Kathryn struggled back to her feet, fought to get the metal beam off of Annika.

"You're my mission."

"Then finish it, but I'm not leaving you. I'll never leave you, Annika."

"My designation is—"

"Seven then!" Kathryn reached out. "Come with me."

It was too late to save her, flaming metal falling all around them, then disintegrating and Kathryn felt her head hit as darkness closed in.

* * *

_I knew her._

_I'll never leave you, Annika._

She pulled the body out of the water with metal fingers and dragged the woman to the shore. She looked down at the auburn hair, the wrong shape and form, but she couldn't say what would be the right one. She reached out, drew her hand back and stared at the silvery color for a long moment, then turned and walked away.

* * *

"Welcome back, Captain."

Kathryn woke with her mouth tasting like cotton and her head feeling stuffed with it. Tom Paris was smiling at her bedside, looking entirely too cheerful. "Back?"

"You've only been unconscious for three days," Tom informed her.

He passed her a cup of ice chips. She waved it aside.

"They found you by the river. Alive. Despite your orders to blow up the helicarrier with you on it."

She looked at him. "It was the right thing to do."

He stared back, then nodded. "I trust you to do the right thing, Captain. Right now, the right thing is to relax for a bit and try to heal. Okay?"

She smiled, leaned back in the bed, and decided, "I might just do that."

* * *

 

A woman stood at the back of a museum tour group, her blonde hair pulled up tightly under the hat she'd since purchased. She was staring at the Captain America exhibit and a woman she'd recognized, draped in American colors.

Winter Soldier, the flesh and blood Hydra operatives she'd worked with had called her. Seven, the Queen's voice had sounded within her mind. But this woman, this captain, had called her something else.

"Katherine," she breathed.

**Author's Note:**

> This worked better in my head and probably needed about 2K more words, but I hope you enjoy it.


End file.
